Satellites, Spy Spacecraft, and Orbital Debris

One trillion dollars is the estimated cost of space debris pollution clean-up. Every country that has launched anything into orbit is responsible for the pollution that is growing every year. Space access could one day not be possible, rendering all satellite telecommunications of voice and data compromised. Imagine no global internet. Every object including satellites over 125 miles in altitude will be in orbit for decades and possibly centuries.

Space Debris from Unmanned and Manned Missions Since Oct. 4, 1957

Space Debris - The Problem

Unmitigated dispersion of space debris is compromising our global communications and putting our troops at peril. In addition, space debris have been affecting not only the astronauts in the Space Shuttle, but also the space station. National security has been compromised by space debris. Over 135 million pieces of orbiting space debris traveling at speeds in excess of mach 26, or 17,000 miles per hour, have been destroying the Iridium communications satellites, as well as corrupting the GPS constellation satellite signals that support our Predator, Reaper, and other unmanned air vehicles (UAV’s). In the battle ground in Afghanistan, when faced with 200 Taliban, an air strike of Predators, Reapers, and support manned aircraft is needed for our warriors on the ground. Without cell telecommunications from satellites, the mission is compromised; our troops are in jeopardy, unable to call an air strike or reach chain of command to receive intelligence.

National security relies on global surveillance from satellites that provide telephony, television signals, GPS, as well as global intranet and internet connection. With compromised satellite support, the loss of electronic warfare edge could prove to be disastrous. Terrestrial coalition efforts in the global war on terror could be hampered for years to come.

Space debris is a clear and present danger. This was identified in the February 10, 2009, collision between Iridium 33, one of 66 required direct military communications satellites in orbit, and Kosmos-2251, a defunct Soviet military communications satellite 490 miles over northern Siberia.

There are immediate and long term solutions required. Space debris has become a menace looming larger and more pressing than questions of global warming, alternative energy solutions, and industrial pollution.

Wall Street Journal Front Page A1A Cosmic Question: How to Get Rid Of All That Orbiting Space Junk?

MARCH 11, 2009

A Cosmic Question: How to Get Rid Of All That Orbiting Space Junk? Crash of U.S., Russian Craft Renews Interest; Lasers? Rocket-Powered Water Guns?By DANIEL MICHAELSIn the 1980s, Jim Hollopeter helped design rockets that shot into orbit. Today, some of those launchers are still cluttering up space, and he wants to wash them away with a rocket-powered water gun.

Like many aerospace engineers, Mr. Hollopeter is worried about thousands of pieces of useless equipment circling Earth. Bits of spent rocket boosters, old exploded satellites and tools dropped by space-walking astronauts are just some of the trash racing along in the near-vacuum of space.

Jim HollopeterThe volume of man-made space debris has grown so large that scientists say garbage now poses a bigger safety threat to the U.S. space shuttle than an accident on liftoff or landing. The International Space Station occasionally fires thrusters to dodge junk.

The problem hit home Feb. 10, when a defunct Russian military satellite smashed into an American one used for commercial communications, spewing shards across thousands of cubic miles.

Space Debris

Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, a leading space research center, recently conducted feasibility studies into junk-zapping lasers and garbage-collecting rockets. Dr. Klinkrad at ESA is now leading an international space commission that is assessing debris-removal possibilities. He is also organizing two global conferences that will discuss ideas later this month.

Experts are also taking a fresh look at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's 1996 Project Orion, a "space broom" concept to fry space trash with ground-based lasers. When Jonathan W. Campbell started leading the effort, he thought the approach would entail futuristic and impossibly costly technologies.

"I thought it would be a Buck Rogers thing," the astrophysicist recalls. Instead, his team concluded that for the price of one space-shuttle launch -- roughly $500 million -- the laser could nudge thousands of bits of garbage toward incineration in the atmosphere within five years. Compared to the cost of losing a satellite or a shuttle to space debris impact, "this looks like a bargain," says Dr. Campbell, who works at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

A key to his plan is using existing low-power lasers in quick pulses, much like the flashbulb on a camera. The laser would only singe the surface of an object in space, but that tiny burn could still help point it downward, Dr. Campbell says. Project Orion's low-budget approach hits at a conundrum of space debris.

Multibillion-dollar budgets have parked people in space, allowed global telecommunications and brought Star Wars military systems within reach. But cleanup missions to pick up all the trash cast off by a launch are prohibitively expensive. "The problem with removing space debris is you don't have any financial benefit from doing it," says Dr. Klinkrad.

To rocket scientists, who defy gravity for a living, that's an irresistible challenge. Mr. Hollopeter says he got excited by water-blasting because it's so low-tech. "This is basically the cheapest way I could come up with," says the 61-year-old engineer, who now works for Satellite Communications in Austin, Texas.

Mr. Hollopeter's recent work was sparked by a request last November for space-cleaning ideas from Launchspace Training, a space consulting firm in Bethesda, Md. Launchspace ran the project, which drew more than 100 responses, as a promotion and to tap aging engineers with experience from the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s, says director Robert Russo.

"There's a magnificent pool of knowledge and talent out there, and I think they're just not being asked," says Mr. Russo. He says Mr. Hollopeter's idea was one of the most original, although nuttier concepts were also submitted by "techno-geeks who read science fiction and know nothing about space."

Blown to BitsAmong the suggestions: launching big nets and large magnets to snag refuse, or using high-energy lasers to atomize debris. None of these ideas is feasible. Magnets would be useless because spacecraft contain almost no iron. Nets are almost uncontrollable. Blasting debris, meanwhile, would simply create smaller remains that would be tougher to track and produce a vast haze of shrapnel, experts say.

Background

The LEO environment is becoming congested with space debris which has caused a growing concern in recent years, since collisions at orbital velocities can be highly damaging or dangerous and can produce even more space debris in the process, called the Kessler Syndrome. The Joint Space Operations Center, part of United States Strategic Command (formerly the United States Space Command), currently tracks more than 8,500 objects larger than 10cm in LEO,[4] however a limited Arecibo Observatory study suggested there could be about one million objects larger than 2 millimeters,[5] which are too small to be seen from the ground.[

The Independent NewsSpace debris has reached 'tipping point'

Space debris has reached 'tipping point'

Friday, 2 September 2011

Space junk has made such a mess of Earth's orbit that experts say we may need to finally think about cleaning it up.

That may mean vacuuming up debris with weird space technology - cosmic versions of nets, magnets and giant umbrellas, according to the chairman of an expert panel that issued a new report on the problem.

There are 22,000 objects in orbit that are big enough for officials on the ground to track and countless more smaller ones that could do damage to human-carrying spaceships and valuable satellites. The International Space Station has to move out of the way of debris from time to time.

"We've lost control of the environment," said retired Nasa senior scientist Donald Kessler, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.

Since the space age began 54 years ago, civilisation has littered the area just above Earth's atmosphere with leftover boosters and other parts that come off during launches, as well as old satellites. When scientists noticed that this could be a problem, they came up with agreements to limit new space junk and those plans had been working.

Those agreements are intended to make sure what is sent into orbit eventually falls back to Earth and burns up.

But two events in the past four years - a 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test and a 2009 crash-in-orbit of two satellites - put so much new junk in space that everything changed, the report said. The widely criticised Chinese test used a missile to smash an aging weather satellite into 150,000 pieces of debris larger 1cm and 3,118 pieces can be tracked by radar on the ground, the report said.

"Those two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years," Mr Kessler said.

All that junk that means something has to be done, "which means you have to look at cleaning space", he said.

The study only briefly mentions the clean-up possibility, raising technical, legal and diplomatic hurdles. But it refers to a report earlier this year by a US Defence Department science think-tank that outlines all sorts of unusual techniques. The report by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is called "Catcher's Mitt" and it mentions harpoons, nets, tethers, magnets and even a giant dish or umbrella-shaped device that would sweep up tiny pieces of debris.

While the new report does not recommend using the technology, Mr Kessler said it is needed. He likes one company's idea of a satellite that is armed with nets that could be sprung on wayward junk. Attached to the net is an electromagnetic tether that could either pull the junk down to a point where it would burn up harmlessly or boost it to safer orbit.

Nasa officials said they are examining the study.

The report is from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, which is an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the US government on science.

SummaryNASA Labs, Commercial Satellites and Russian Spy Space Craft

PROBLEM: SPACE DEBRIS HAZARDOUS TO EARTH

Debris Traveling 17,500 mph

Increasing to Millions of Debris Involving Collisions of Spacecraft and Satellites

The Kessler Syndrome-Predicted Space Debris to be an issue with Space Travel and Satellites

Space Debris: From Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) Majority of Active Satellites in Harms Way